Doing it my way...

I dedicate this piece to one of the difference makers. I dedicate this piece to Dave Hoover. Artist. Teacher. Friend. I thank you for your unselfish acts. You opened the eyes of many of us to different techniques. You took the time & patience to push all of us to be better at our craft, when many of your colleagues were content to tell us to read tutorials instead of teaching us hands on. They just wanted a paycheck, but you actually cared and enjoyed it. It showed. I thank you. May you rest in peace teacher.

Photoshop! It's been a while since I've gone in and dabbled in doing straight up raw coloring in Photoshop. I try to maintain a even balance with my tools. When it comes to the digital I made it a point to force myself to teach myself Adobe Illustrator for over a year. Photoshop was my first intro into the digital fray. It opened new doors for me. I come from the league of Tria Letraset markers and Prismacolor pencils. Acrylics and gauche.

Photoshop cut the process time in half. Magic wand and fill in your colors on layers. Shout out to my buddy Lemwell for teaching me layers. That was the catch 22. Back at my days at AIPH the teachers "taught" photoshop, but my classmates gave me the inside track. There was a time went heavy in with the Photoshop, but I kept the coloring technique very simple.

Over time I tried to mix what I was taught via painting in high school and mix that into photoshop. It was a matter of keeping up with the times.

I recently tried to land a design job with a buddy of mine working on a video game, but the key to landing it was that I had to color my work like him. I gave it a legit shot, but I realized that I can't carbon copy. I can only work in my style of coloring. That simple. The B side of it all, it made me want to get back in and start coloring in Photoshop again.

The Wolverine is basically an exercise in how fast I can work my detail in & if a solid black line will make for a better contrast. It may not make sense to some, but it will come out clear when I'm done I suppose. The image above is about 45 min in. Updates soon...